Paul McCartney: "Penny Lane" is a bus roundabout in Liverpool; and there is a barber's shop showing photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to know - no, that's not true, they're just photos of hairstyles, but all the people who come and go/stop and say hello. There's a bank on the corner so we made up the bit about the banker in his motor car. It's part fact, part nostalgia for aplace which is a great place, blue suburban skies as we remember it, and it's still there.
And we put in a joke or two: "Four of fish and finger pie." The women would never dare say that, except to themselves. Most people wouldn't hear it, but "finger pie" is just a nice little joke for the Liverpool lads who like a bit of smut.
John Lennon (in 1968) - "We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane-- the bank was there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just reliving childhood."
John Lennon (in 1968) - "Penny Lane is not only a street but it's a district... a suburban district where, until age four, I lived with my mother and father. So I was the only Beatle that lived in Penny Lane."
Paul McCartney (in 1994) - "John and I would always meet at Penny Lane. That was where someone would stand and sell you poppies each year on British Legion poppy day... When I came to write it, John came over and helped me with the third verse, as often was the case. We were writing childhood memories-- recently faded memories from eight or ten years before, so it was recent nostalgia, pleasant memories for both of us. All the places were still there, and because we remembered it so clearly we could have gone on."
